Margret Sloan

Warren is home for the summer and his dad has informed him that this past week of sleeping until noon is his only luxury. Time for Warren to get busy and find a summer job. He had looked half-heartedly before he left school, but it’s getting serious at this point - his spending money for the next school year depends on what he can make this summer.

My friend Tom has offered him a spot on his work crew building decks on new homes. It’s good money and relatively easy to learn. The only drawback is he can’t work if it’s raining and we’ll need to spot him some money to buy a pair of good workboots.

There’s a website called Work Boots USA that gives a quick overview of the different types of boots and it carries all the major brands. You can easily tell from the short description under each photo if the boot has a soft toe, hard toe or steel toe - the type of toe you need depends upon the type of work you’ll be doing and what kind of workplace hazards you have to protect your feet from.

I told Warren that if he picks out a pair of work boots from that site I’ll put them on my charge card. They can have the boots delivered by the weekend and he can start work for Tom on Monday.

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve loved New York City. We went on several trips to New York while in school. I’ll never forget the 8th grade trip to Manhattan. We boards large commercial buses at 3:00 in the morning and slept during most of the drive up, spent the entire day doing tourist things and drove back the same night. IT was exhausting but thrilling and I jumped at every chance after that to go to New York for another visit.

Most of my friends that left the medspa company have accepted positions with a new franchise that is based in New York. Sadly, that means most of them have had to pack up and move from here to New York. So now I don’t have the chance for the occasional lunch or cocktails to stay in touch with most of my friends. It’s down to a few emails and occasional phone calls.

Alexa is the last of the old crew to take a job with the new company. We had lunch today at our favorite Sushi place to say goodbye. She is excited about the move and I’m thrilled for her! She’s going to stay with one of our friends already there, sleeping on the futon while she looks for place of her own. To help with that I put her in touch with one of the best real estate agents in Manhattan, Dottie Herman.

Dottie is a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the largest real estate company in New York. I had met Dottie years ago at a real estate function in Las Vegas and kept her business card just in case I would have the opportunity to move to New York. Alas, it is Alexa who is getting that opportunity and I’m happy to share the contact information with her.

I don’t know who the others used to help them find a new home, but if I was looking for Manhattan New York real estate I would call Dottie first. As soon as Alexa finds her new condo and gets settled in, I’ll be flying to New York for a visit with my old buddies.

So many people drive to work as a mindless exercise every day. They back out of their driveway and take the same route to work, sitting in rush hour traffic and stressing until they get to their office. The drive to work is a dull, boring routine.

I can’t do that. I’ll drive to work a different way at least 2 or 3 times each week. I really don’t like to do the same thing over and over. I like variety and I like to enjoy my drive to work - not just endure it. Every morning I see new flowers blooming, new pets in the yards, and new cars sharing the road with me. I love starting each day as a new adventure!

I talk to dozens of people every day, most of them are people responding to an ad for new employees. The ad lists my cell phone number so people only know my name and not the company they are calling - it’s a privacy thing.

But sometimes keeping up with all the numbers without names attached can be very challenging. I was happy to find a web site that lets me look up numbers, including cell phone numbers. It can be hard to find a good place for Reverse Cell Phone Lookup. And a cool part of this site is that if you don’t want your number to be given out, you can subscribe to a “No Call List” and they will remove your number from their database.

I think at some point in each of our lives, everyone in my family has worked in a restaurant for some reason or another. I was a bartender and I loved it. Wish I had my own bar, but that’s the middle class American’s dream, isn’t it?

If I could make my dream come true, I would start a new business someplace where I want to live, pack up and leave here. One of the things stopping me is getting all the financing I would need. Banks are harder to deal with every day and I’m not interested in taking on partners. For one thing I want autonomy in making the business decisions and for another I don’t want to share the profits from my own hard work with people who don’t do anything except put in the start up money.

That’s why I’ve been looking into Business Loans online. There is a website, www.advancerestaurantfinance.com, that specializes in small business and restaurant loans. They are more flexible than banks and they have a simple application process that you can start right online. I like the fact that they are located and licensed int he state of California, so I am seriously considering making my dreams come true with the first step of finding the financing I’ll need.